Thyme Out Cafe

Please note that Thyme Out closed in March 2013.

I think some of the other reviewers were a bit hard on the place. We went with a living social coupon. It was cute and cozy and the food was excellent. The house salad with blueberry dressing was delicious and fresh. The chicken salad on croissant was the best I’ve ever had and the apple pie was good too. The chicken entrée portion was too small so I would stick with the sandwiches or pasta entrée. I think the menu was a bit ambitious for such a small place and should be cut down to only the customer favorites to maximize profits.
Yes, the service was slow (so don’t go if you are in a hurry) but our waitress was working very hard so it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’m sure it would be impossible to pay a chef and make ends meet if they had a larger staff. I would go again and wait patiently for my meal, enjoying the food as well as the satisfaction of helping out a small business that is trying to provide delicious food and make an honest living.

Had a late lunch there today. The wait service wasn’t too bad considering we were there around 2:30 and had no other tables to compete with. However, it didn’t explain the longer than expected wait for relatively simple fare to produce and us being the only table.
As a vegetarian, I had their veggie wrap without the cheese. It was swimming in oil and made the wrap soggy and a mess to eat. The vegetables were also overcooked and perhaps were from steam table anyway.
If someone is bothering to order a vegetarian item, most likely they are at least somewhat health conscious and while wanting something beyond a steamed head of broccoli, really want something fresh and flavorful which oil doesn’t convey either. Actually, as a vegan it wouldn’t surprise me if butter were involved as well.
And in rare cases, as today, I did try a bite of a spinach dip that my wife had ordered. Beyond the intense garlic flavor, little else came through.
The two in our party that ordered burgers seemed to enjoy them, but as a former burger lover, I would have been livid to receive burgers absolutely dwarfed by the buns they were served on.
At $ 27 for lunch for two without any drinks, the value wasn’t there either. Perhaps those within walking distance can find more appeal, but honestly it isn’t a place I’d bother to visit again.

I’m afraid Thyme Out is not ready for prime thyme. We have had a dining coupon for nearly a year. We tried to use it one time and our Garmin could not find the place and when we called for directions they were full, hosting a party. This time we made a date with our friends, the L’s.
To summarize up front, the food was OK although portions are not large and presentation is nonexistent. The service however was appalling. It was not rude, just completely incompetent. I really do not understand how they are in business. I assume our server is a son of the owner. No one would hire him on purpose. He could at least be trained a little.
I don’t really know where to start except to describe the experience. We started by ordering crab stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer. I ordered lobster bisque and the others had the house salad. Around the table Ms L ordered tilapia, Mr L ordered fettuccini with chicken, Ms T ordered chicken modega and I ordered a spicy burger.
Throughout the evening the waits were extensive. We were told they only had one cook that night, but we were the only diners inside the restaurant. There were a few outside, but they were not busy. I don’t mind leisurely dining, but this went a little beyond that.
The soup was first to arrive, followed by two salads. We had to remind them that we needed another salad. On a positive note, the soup was good with rich flavors, although it was not hot. Everyone liked the blueberry vinaigrette dressing that is the house offering. By the time we had finished the soup and salad we had still not received the mushrooms. Mr L asked for them and they did arrive. They were supposed to be crab stuffed, but they are really stuffed with a crab Rangoon cream cheese filling, mostly cream cheese. We liked them and they were piping hot.
Now we killed some time and one of the servers asked if we would like some bread. It was brought and we ate it and killed more time. Mr L asked for some more bread but it never did come. At one point we were told that they were just waiting on Ms T’s chicken modega. Finally the chicken did show up. We waited some more and Ms L’s tilapia arrived as did my burger. We waited and Mr L told us to eat before things got cold, but his fettuccini finally came. The fettuccini did not have the chicken that he ordered. He asked for them to remove the upcharge from the bill. We all dug in. Ms L indicated that her tilapia was very good. I felt it looked like a pretty small portion. Mr L was not too happy that he did not get the chicken, but said the fettuccini in its cream sauce was also good. Ms T’s chicken modega was swimming in a pool of butter or oil and the chicken was on the dry side. My burger was a preformed, tiny McDonald’s single patty lost on an oversized ciabatta bun. The bun was over toasted, dry and crunchy. There were two pickled jalapeño slices on it to make it spicy and some flavored mayo that actually saved it from disaster. The burger was just a thing dropped on a bare plate. There were supposed to be chips but it turns out they were out of them. So I had a choice of pasta or fruit. I asked for pasta and it was really a cold pasta salad, which I don’t ever get on purpose. About half way through eating, Ms L wondered if she and Ms T would ever get their vegetable and potato. So they asked for those and they were brought. The vegetable was grossly overcooked broccoli and the potatoes were swimming in oil and butter like the chicken.
Our meal took over 2−½ hours. We had to ask for five different parts of the meal. A few more diners arrived as we neared the end of our ordeal. I wanted to wish them good luck. We observed one couple being brought a carafe of wine but no glasses. After a wait, the woman asked for glasses. They never came so she finally got up and went to find some.
Ms L wondered out loud at the end, «what do you tip for service like this?». That question was answered when we inspected the bill. It turns out that a condition of our coupon included an automatic tip of 18%. These coupons are not always the bargain they might seem. I don’t take pleasure in this. I am rating Thyme Out with a generous two stars so it will be read for what happened and not a rant. You can judge what I really thought.

This review was almost 2-​stars.
But my lunch entrée was so good that I bumped it up to a 3.
What’s wrong with this place, you ask? Unprofessional service. That’s what knocked stars off my review.
Thyme Out (awful name IMHO) is located in a really nifty historic house off of Highway N. When you step inside you see… the décor. And it’s…uh, well… kitsch. I guess that’s putting it politely. It kind of reminds me of a grandma who raided a Cracker Barrel, or an overzealous 60something aunt of yours who happens to do 90% of her interior décor shopping at Hobby Lobby or something like that. Yeeeah. I don’t know, I think they could do better. Also the food struck me as Italian food, not French, so I don’t understand why they have all of these signs that say «PARIS!!» and such on them. Derp! It kind of made me think that this is what the Map Room would look like if it were owned by a psycho granny and served a full menu.
Decided I didn’t want QT food for lunch in addition to breakfast this morning so it was Unilocal phone app to the rescue! Thyme was one of the few places open for lunch in the area, so I decided to go there. It took about 8 mins roughly to get there from where my class was being held, so I noted it would be about 16 mins roundtrip and the rest of the time would be for ordering, waiting, and eating. I only get 1 hour for lunch during training sessions.
I walked in, and no one was there to greet me. I waited a good 3 – 5 mins or so before anyone appeared. A young girl, maybe about 19 or so, seated me at a really awkward, big, round table stuffed into a corner. She didn’t tell me her name or asked if I had been in before. *shrug* She had a look on her face that was a mixture of confusion, annoyance, pain, and apathy. She was, overall, very slow in every sense of the word; I am not sure if she was just tired or… what?
I asked for a glass of water, and I also wanted to order wine but they didn’t have pinot noir so I wanted a suggestion but this girl clearly had no idea what she was talking about and was really lost. I blame the management for POOR training of their staff. I ordered seafood ravioli which came with a salad but she didn’t ask me what dressing I wanted.
She came back about 10 min later with a warm glass of red wine (ew), and no water. It was at this time she asked what dressing I wanted. About 8 min later I received my salad. I feel like she must have been waiting every table in the entire restaurant, which doesn’t seem like much, but for someone as undertrained as her, I am sure it was nothing short of a daunting task.
The salad itself was decent but tiny as hell. Why bother calling it a salad? Why not call it «a handful of lettuce in a bowl with two tiny tomatoes on top»?? The cherry tomatoes were REALLY delicious and I was sad there weren’t more! The onions were good too. The dressing was a garlicy ranch. Yum. It took me about 2 minutes to eat the salad and I was starved still.
It took what seemed like eons to get my seafood ravioli. And when it came, a guy wearing a dirty white t shirt with black headphones around his neck brought it to my table. He didn’t ask if I wanted cheese (for obvious reasons, if you see the photo I posted) and merely told me «plate is hot.» I didn’t have a fork anymore because when she removed my salad bowl, the fork went with it. I did NOT want to wait another 10 mins for this girl to come back to my table so I casually looked around to see if I could find where they keep the forks, but thankfully, by some miracle of god, she appeared. When I asked her if I could have a fork she had the most confused and offended look on her face like «WTF»… she asked «you mean you didn’t have one in your napkin roll?» And I said «no, I did. I used it. I need a new one.»
The concept was truly earth-​shattering. I almost felt bad for her. She brought me a fork and I proceeded to eat what was probably the least healthy food item I’ve consumed for this entire month. (Their website talks about ‘healthy’ food.) A good 1500 calories of mostly cheese and heavy cream. There was a gigantic «patch» of coagulating cheese on top and out from underneath, oozed pinkish red sauce like pre-​Jurassic lava.
Not sure why they call this «seafood ravioli» when all that seemed to be inside was shrimp. The sauce might have had lobster in it, but I couldn’t tell if it was lobster meat or just gigantic clusters of melting cheese mixed with shrimp bits that had fallen out of my ravioli. Either way, it was good. And I felt guilty for consuming enough calories for one day in 3 mins!
I ate super quick in order to have sufficient time to get back to my car and drive back to my training class. I got back at around 1:08pm which wasn’t bad, but holy shit, did I have a stomach ache the rest of the time! Not exactly pleasant.
Would I return? Probably not. It’s too far out of the way for me to go back. They need better staff training! An ignorable suggestion at best, but it would really help!

My wife and I went for a late lunch yesterday. It’s a restaurant in an old house… lots of little rooms. Nice.
Service = non-​existent. At one point I had to go into the kitchen to drag the waiter out for a refill.
Food = mixed. The $ 11 martini salad was lettuce, dried cranberries and canned nectarines with some dried up chicken. Execrable. The $ 8 mozzarella sandwich tasted fine: store-​bought whole-​wheat bread with mozz, onion and pesto. Meh, but it tasted fine. The merlot was pleasant.
Take-​home — cute, but unless you’ve run out of gas in Cottleville, avoid.